Stories

An Email Update

I recently sent out an email update regarding out deployment. Here is it. If you have any question, send me an email.

Greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ.

A hearty and heartfelt Thank You to you for the support you have gladly given. Your prayers, your volunteer time, and your financial support have already helped us significantly. Our heavenly Father—and yours—has already provided greatly for us through you. Thank you.

As often as we can, our family gathers for evening devotions. After we sit down and attempt to calm boisterous boys and loquacious little girls, we pray the evening service, which includes the Apostles Creed. The First Article has become very poignant to me: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth."

We confess with Martin Luther that God provides all our bodily needs. He gives clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children—everything we need to support this body and life.

As the rest of the Creed points out, He also provides the greater needs we have—forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation through His Son. It's precisely this message He has called me to proclaim to those in Asia.

For all these gifts, my family and I give all thanks and praise to God Most High. He will provide according to His will, as He promised.

A Common Question

The most common question we receive is, "When will you deploy?" Our often unsatisfactory response is, "We don't know." The truth is, it depends on a number of factors. Under the Network Supported Missionary model (which I described here), one of these factors is establishing a sustainable network prior to deployment. Other factors include visas, housing, and so on.

For each missionary, the International Center calculates a financial profile that accounts for all the expenses necessary to deploy and keep a missionary family on the field. Most missionaries, along with Mission Advancement, raise between $150,000–$200,000 annually; some raise even more.

Our profile is near $200,000.

Right now, through your generous support, God has provided $112,750 toward our financial profile. Honestly, even this amount astounds me! Praise the Lord for His generosity.

At the same time, there are still plenty of opportunities for people to partner with the LCMS to send us, especially for recurring support—around 88,000 opportunities in fact. Furthermore, the longer we spend raising support, the more support must be raised before we deploy.

The amount seems insurmountable. But in fact, it's quite manageable when broken into chunks. It only takes another 64 partners giving at different levels. Consider this:

When

15 individuals/families partner at $25 per month

15 individuals/families partner at $50 per month

10 individuals/families partner at $100 per month

10 individuals/families partner at $200 per month

1 individual/family partners at $500 per month

and when

1 congregation partners at $8,000 annually

1 congregation partners at $5,000 annually

5 congregations partner at $3,000 annually

6 congregations partner at $1,000 annually

the remaining $88,000 of our financial profile will be completed with recurring support.1That's only 51 more individual families and 13 congregations! Such support would help us jump one more huge hurdle in preparation for deployment.

At this time of the year, many of you are considering your own personal/family budgets and congregational budgets. Please consider partnering with the LCMS to share the forgiveness of Christ in Asia through us.

Right now is a great time to partner with the LCMS to send us. The sooner you take advantage of this opportunity, the sooner you will be sharing Christ in Asia through us. In thankful response for this opportunity, we will keep you updated with pictures and newsletters about the work Christ is doing in Asia. When we return for home service, if we can, we will do our best to visit your congregations and share this work with you in person.

If you would like to partner with us, you can do that directly at the LCMS giving page here: Give Now. If you prefer paper, here’s a link to our prayer card. You can download it and send it in.

Thank you for your time.

“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” — Philippians 1:3–5

In Christ's Abundant Love,

Rev. Roy S. Askins

This would get us very close to deployment, but because a number of factors affect deployment, I can't say for certain when deployment would actually happen. For instance, if the housing isn't yet ready, we might have to wait for deployment. ↩︎